peopled by half-breeds, mulattoes and a sprinkling of whites, grows
tidier and more capable every year. The aborigines of Cape Cod have left
slight traces save the melodious names that cling to bay and creek.
Arrow-heads are scattered about, and now and then the plough turns up
one of the clam-shell hoes with which the Nausets used to till their
maize-fields. The Praying Indians of the Cape deserve our memory, for
they were always faithful to their English neighbors. When the first
regiment was raised in Barnstable County for the Revolutionary War,
twenty-two Mashpees enlisted, of whom but one came home. A Praying
Indian of Yarmouth has won a place in New England song,--Nauhaught the
Deacon, who, hunger-pinched, restored the tempting purse of gold to the
Wellfleet skipper and received a tithe “as an honest man.”
The beauty of the upper Cape, culminating in the lovely town of
Falmouth, is largely rural and sylvan. A system of dyking has, within
the last fifty years, converted much of the salt marsh to good, fresh
meadow, and, from Orleans up, the look of the country is more and more
agricultural. Portions of Yarmouth are well wooded, and in Barnstable,
Sandwich and Falmouth are depths of forest where the fox and the deer
run wild. The wolf alone has been exterminated, and that with no small
trouble, the Cape finally proposing, after grisly heads had been nailed
on all her meeting-houses, to build a high fence along her upper border
and shut the wolves out. But Plymouth and Wareham objected, from their
side of the question, to having the wolves shut in, and this ingenious
scheme had to be abandoned. These woodlands are dotted in profusion with
silvery ponds, which the Fish Commission at Wood’s Holl keeps well
stocked. Often the north side, as in Sandwich, is skirted by long
stretches of unreclaimed marsh, over which the heron flaps, with the
distinguished air of an old resident, and from which the sweet whistle
of the marsh quail answers the “Bob White” of the woods. There is plenty
of rock in this landscape, the backbone of the Cape jutting through.
Barnstable proudly exhibits four hundred feet of wall, two feet in
width, wrought from a single mass of granite found within her limits.
Falmouth arbutus grows pinkest about the base of a big boulder known as
City Rock, and a field of tumbled stones upon her Quisset road is
accounted for on the hypothesis that here the Devil, flying with his
burden over to Nantucket, “broke his apron-string.” The trees, too, are
of goodly size and stand erect. Elms, silver-leaf poplars, balm of
Gileads, great sycamores, spotted with iron-rust lichen,
[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF FALMOUTH.]
and willows, lemon yellow in the sun, shade the waysides. Golden-winged
woodpeckers and red-shouldered blackbirds dart to and fro, while the
abundance of jaunty martin-houses shows that Cape Cod hospitality is not
limited to the human.
The quiet, white homesteads, with green blinds, broad porches and
sometimes a cupola for the sea-view, stand in a sweet tranquillity and
dignity that should abash the showy summer residence. But these
old-fashioned homes keep up with the times. Against the well-sweep leans
the bicycle. The dooryards are blue with myrtle, or pink with
rose-bushes, or gay with waving daffodils. Old age is in fashion on the
Cape. When twilight fades, the passer-by sees gathered about the early
evening lamp the white heads of those whose “chores” are done. And
though death comes at last, the cemeteries are so tenderly kept that the
grave is robbed of half its dread. Even in the oldest burial-grounds,
where the worn, scarred stones lean with the privilege of age, the
staring death’s-heads are cozily muffled in moss, and “Patience, wife of
Experience,” sleeps under a coverlet of heartsease.
All the way from Provincetown to Falmouth
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE GREEN.]
are certain briny signals,--a ship’s figure-head, marble steps whose
stone was washed ashore as wreckage, lobster-pots, herring-nets,
conch-shells set on lintels, a discontented polar bear pacing a
stout-paled yard, ruffling cockatoos, boats converted into flower-boxes,
whales’ vertebræ displayed for ornament, garden-beds marked out with
scallop-shells, everywhere the ship-shape look, the sailor’s handy rig,
and everywhere the codfish used for weathercocks. In Barnstable
court-house a mammoth cod is suspended from the ceiling. Vistas of ocean
outlook, too, from under arches of green branches, flash upon the eye,
the salty flavor is not lost in woodland fragrances, and the rolling
hills and wavy pastures take their model from the sea.
Of the old-timey features of the Cape, no one is more impressive than
the witch-like windmill with its peaked cap, outspread arms and slanting
broomstick, reminding us that the Pilgrims came from Holland. Some of
these antique mills have been bought by summer residents and moved to
their estates for curiosities, but the one at Orleans was in use as late
as 1892, taking its profitable toll of two quarts out of the bushel.
[Illustration: SHIRICK’S POND, FALMOUTH.]
The general history of Falmouth but repeats the story of her sister
towns. The first settlers are believed to have come in boats from
Barnstable, in 1660. They encamped for the night among the flags of
Consider Hatch’s Pond, where a child was born and, in recognition of the
rushes that sang his earliest lullaby, named Moses. The town was duly
incorporated in 1686, next after Eastham, and has steadfastly stood for
piety, wisdom and patriotism. She admitted the Quakers, and if one of
her deacons held a negro slave, as colonial deacons often did, poor
Cuffee was at least brought to the communion table. It is Truro that
contains “Pomp’s Lot,” where the stolen African, with loaf of bread and
jug of water at his feet for sustenance on his new journey, escaped
slavery by hanging. As for learning, it was Sandwich Academy which the
Cape towns held in awe, but our Falmouth men, like the rest, half
sailor, half farmer and all theologian, had a genuine culture, born of
keen-eyed voyaging and of lonely thought, that kept the air about them
tingling with intelligence. When it comes to war stories, if
Provincetown, from her end of the Cape, can tell of her boy in blue that
went down with the _Cumberland_,
[Illustration: THE WHALE-SHIP “COMMODORE MORRIS” AND THE FALMOUTH
CAPTAINS WHO SAILED IN HER.]
and her naval captain at Manila, Falmouth can recall that twice she was
bombarded by the British and twice defended by the valor of her sons,
and when the Civil War broke out, with the larger share of her
able-bodied men at sea, she yet sent more than her quota of soldiers to
the front.
Within the last quarter-century, Falmouth has entered on new activities,
largely due to the increasing fame of Buzzard’s Bay as a summer resort.
The story goes that the town had all gone to sleep, but somebody woke
one day and painted his front fence, and forthwith his neighbors, not to
be outdone, painted theirs, and their houses too, and the new era came
in with a rush. But whatever good fortune the future has in store, Paul
Revere’s bell, that sounds from her central steeple, will hold Falmouth
true to her traditions; for these Cape towns, simple as their record is,
have worked out on unconsciously heroic lines the essential principles
of a God-fearing, self-respecting democracy.
[Illustration]
DEERFIELD
OLD POCUMTUCK VALLEY
BY GEORGE SHELDON
To every one familiar with the history of the old Bay State, the name of
Deerfield naturally brings to mind two diverse pictures: one, the giant
trees of the primeval forest under whose sombre shade the white-haired
Eliot prayed, and the sluggish stream beside whose banks he gathered its
roving denizens for a test of civilization; the other, that scene of woe
and desolation, when, under a wintry sky, the glare of burning houses
lighted up a wide expanse of snow, shaded by dark columns of wavering
smoke, and splashed here and there with red. The first picture suggests
possibilities, the second results. The connecting link between the two
is the fact that out of the labors of Eliot on the river Charles grew
directly the settlement of the English on the Pocumtuck.
Back of all was the interest in the newly discovered heathen, which sent
currents of gold from England across the seas to the Indian missions. Of
all these that of the Apostle Eliot was the head and front. His first
attempt, at Newton, was a failure, from its proximity to a Christian
town. On his petition, the General Court granted him a tract in the
wilderness where he and the uncontaminated native could come face to
face with the God of Nature. This tract was claimed by the town of
Dedham, and, after a successful legal contest, the General Court gave
the claimant in lieu of it the right to select eight thousand acres in
any unoccupied part of the colony. After wide search this grant was laid
out on Pocumtuck River, and the selection was ratified by the Court,
October 11, 1665.
This power, however, was only leave to purchase of the native owners.
The laws recognized the rights of the Indians to the soil, and no
Englishman was allowed to buy or even receive as a gift any land from an
Indian without leave of the General Court. The oft-repeated slander that
the fair purchase of land from the
[Illustration: OLD DEERFIELD STREET, 1671-1898.]
Indians was peculiar to William Penn, can be refuted in general by a
study of our early statute books, and in particular by an examination of
the original deeds from the Indians, now in our Memorial Hall.
It will be seen by these deeds that the Indians reserved the right of
hunting, fishing and gathering nuts--all, in fact, that was of any real
value to them. The critic says that in such trades the price was nominal
and that the Indian was outrageously cheated. Fortunately, in this case
existing evidence proves that Dedham paid the natives more than the
English market price, in hard cash, and besides gave one acre at Natick
for every four here.
The money to pay for the eight thousand acres was raised by a tax on the
landholders of Dedham, the owners paying in proportion to the number of
shares or “cow commons” held; and their ownership of the new territory
was in the same proportion. There were five hundred and twenty-two
shares in all, held in common, covering the whole of Dedham.
In 1671 a committee from Dedham laid out highways, set apart tracts for
the support of the ministry, laid out a “Town Plott,” and large sections
of plow-land and of mow-land. In each of these sections individuals
were assigned by lot their respective number of cow commons. Later the
woodlands were divided in the same manner. For generations this land was
bought and sold, not by the acre, but by the cow common, fractions
thereof being sheep or goat commons, five of these being a unit.
The “Town Plott,” laid out in 1671, is the Old Deerfield Street of
to-day.
The first settlers at Pocumtuck were not, as generally supposed, the
original Dedham owners. The shares of the latter had been for years on
the market, and many had passed to outsiders. But only picked men were
allowed to become proprietors. This fact is illustrated by votes like
the following:
“Dec. 4, 1671. John Plimpton is allowed to purchase land of John Bacon
at Pawcumtucke provided that the said John Plimpton doe settle thereupon
in his owne person.” On the same day the request of Daniel Weld for
leave to purchase was refused. No reason was assigned, and Mr. Weld was
admitted soon after.
“Feb. 16, 1671-2. Lieft. Fisher is alowed libertie to sell 6 cow common
rights and one sheepe common right at Paucomtuck to Nathaniel Suttlife
of Medfield.”
[Illustration: FRARY HOUSE, 1698. OLDEST IN THE COUNTY.]
The pioneer settler here was Samuel Hinsdell, of Medford. He had bought
shares, and, impatient of delay in making the division, he became a
squatter, and in 1669 turned the first furrow in the virgin soil of
Pocumtuck. Samson Frary was a close second, if not a contemporary;
“Samson Frary’s cellar” is mentioned in the report of the Committee,
May, 1671.
The settlers increased rapidly. May 7, 1673, the General Court gave them
“Liberty of a Towneship,” which is Deerfield’s only “Act of
Incorporation.” Soon after, a rude meeting-house was built, and Samuel
Mather served as a minister among them.
A loose sheet of paper has been found dated Nov. 7, 1673, with a record
of a town-meeting. This was signed by the following, who must be called
the earliest settlers:
Richard Weler John Barnard
John Plympton John Weler
Joshua Carter Samuel Herenton
Samson Frary John Hinsdell
Quinten Stockwell Ephraim Hinsdell
Joseph Gillet Moses Crafts
Barnabas Hinsdell Nathaniel Sutley
Robert Hinsdell John Farrington
John Allen Thomas Hastings
Daniel Weld Francis Barnard
Samuel Hinsdell Samuel Daniel
Experience Hinsdell James Tufts.
The action of this meeting was chiefly on the division of land, but it
was voted that “all charges respecting the ministers sallerye or
maintenance bee leuied and raised on lands for the present.” Another
page shows a meeting November 17, 1674, when the plantation was called
Deerfield. We have no clue as to why or by what authority it was so
called.
The newcomers found the meadows free from trees, with a rich soil which
soon yielded abundantly of wheat, rye, peas, oats, beans, flax, grass
and Indian corn. The meadows were enclosed with a common fence to keep
out the common stock, which roamed at will on the common land outside.
The war of 1675 is called “Philip’s War” because Philip was able to
incite the tribes to hostilities against the whites, rather than because
it was carried on under his direction. A seer and a patriot Philip may
have been, but he was not a warrior. It is not known that he was ever in
a single conflict.
When the first blood was shed at far-away Swanzey, in June, 1675, the
men of Pocumtuck were not disquieted. With the Indians about them they
had lived for years in perfect harmony. But when the blow fell on
Captains Beers and Lothrop under the shadow of their own Wequamps, war
became a reality. As a measure of defense two or three houses were
slightly fortified, and none too soon. The village was marked for
destruction. On the morning of September 1, 1675, the Indians gathered
in the adjoining woods, awaiting the hour when the men, scattered about
the meadows at their work could be shot down one by one, leaving the
women and children to the mercy of the Indians. This plan was
frustrated. The Indians were discovered early in the morning by James
Eggleston, while looking for his horse. Eggleston was shot and the alarm
given. The people fled to the forts. These were easily defended by the
men, but beyond the range of their muskets ruin and devastation held
sway.
Deerfield was the first town in the Connecticut Valley to be assaulted,
and the alarm was general. The news reached Hadley the same day while
the inhabitants were gathered in the meeting-house observing a fast;
“and,” says Mather, “they were driven from the holy service they were
attending by a most sudden and violent alarm which routed them the whole
day after.” Their alarm and rout were needless; no enemy appeared. Yet
these words of the historian are the narrow foundation on which Stiles
and others gradually built up the romantic myth of Goffe, as the
guardian and deliverer of Hadley.
September 2, the tactics at Deerfield were successfully repeated by the
Indians at Northfield. Eight men were killed in the meadows, but enough
were left in the village to hold the stockade. September 4, Captain
Richard Beers with his company who were marching to their relief, were
surprised, and himself and twenty men were slain. September 5, Major
Robert Treat, with a superior force, brought off the beleaguered
survivors.
Sunday, September 12, another blow fell upon Deerfield. The place had
now a garrison under Captain Samuel Appleton. The Indians could see from
the hills the soldiers gathering in one of the forts for public worship.
They laid an ambush to waylay the soldiers and people returning after
service to the north fort, but all escaped their fire save one, who was
wounded. Nathaniel Cornbury, left to sentinel the north fort, was
captured, and never again heard from. Appleton rallied his men, and the
marauders, after inflicting much loss on the settlers, drew off to Pine
Hill.
But a sadder blow was to fall upon the dwellers in this little vale. The
accumulated result of their industry and toil was to disappear in flame
and ashes. In their wanton destruction the Indians had spared the wheat
in the field for their own future supply; “3000 bushels standing in
stacks,” says Mather. This wheat was needed at headquarters to feed the
gathering troops, and Colonel Pynchon, the Commander-in-Chief, gave
orders to have it threshed and sent to Hadley. Captain Thomas Lothrop,
with his company, was sent to convoy the teams transporting it.
September 18, 1675, “that most fatal day, the saddest that ever befel
New England,” says a contemporary, “Captain Lothrop, with his choice
company of young men, the very flower of the county of Essex,” marched
boldly down the street, across South Meadows, up Long Hill, into the
woods stretching away to Hatfield Meadows. Confident in his strength,
scorning the enemy, Captain Lothrop pushed on through the narrow path,
with not a flanker or vanguard thrown out. Extending along his left lay
a swampy thicket through which crept a nameless brook. Gradually, the
swamp narrowed, and turned to the right across the line of march. At
this spot the combined force of the enemy lay in ambush, and into this
trap marched Lothrop and his men. While the teams were slowly dragging
their loads through the mire, it is said the soldiers laid down their
guns to pluck and eat the grapes which grew in abundance by the way. Be
this true or not, at this spot they were surprised and stunned by the
fierce war-whoop, the flash and roar of muskets with their bolts of
death. Captain Lothrop and many of his command fell at the first fire.
The men of Pocumtuck sank, the “Flower of Essex” wilted before the
blast, and--
“Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
Made the earth wet, and turn’d the unwilling waters red.”
The sluggish stream was baptized for aye, “Bloody Brook.”
Captain Samuel Moseley, who was searching the woods for Indians, hearing
the firing, was soon on the ground. Too late to save, he did his best to
avenge; he charged repeatedly, scattering the enemy, who swarmed as
often as dispersed. But he defied all their efforts to surround him. His
men exhausted with their long efforts, Moseley was about to retire, when
just in the nick of time Major Treat appeared, with a force of English
and Mohegans. The enemy were driven westward and were pursued until
nightfall. The united force then marched to Deerfield, bearing their
wounded, and leaving the dead where they fell.
Mather says, “this was a black and fatal day wherein there was eight
persons made widows and six and twenty children made orphans, all in one
little Plantation.” That plantation was Deerfield, and these were the
heavy tidings which the worn-out soldiers carried to the stricken
survivors of the hamlet. Of the seventeen fathers and brothers who left
them in the morning, not one returned to tell the tale. The next
morning, Treat and Moseley marched to Bloody Brook and buried the
slain--“64 men in one dreadful grave.” The names of sixty-three are
known, and also of seven wounded. John Stebbins, ancestor of the
Deerfield tribe of that name, is the only man in Lothrop’s command known
to have escaped unhurt.
The reported force of the enemy was a thousand warriors, and their loss
ninety-six. This must be taken with a grain of allowance.
Deerfield was now considered untenable, and the poor remnant of her
people were scattered in the towns below.
October 5, Springfield was attacked. The Indians laid the same plan as
at Deerfield and Northfield. Only notice given by a friendly Indian
during the night before saved the town from total destruction. The
assailants were Indians who had lived for generations neighbors and
friends of the Springfield people. On the 4th they had made earnest
protestations of friendship, on the strength of which the garrison had
marched to Hadley. This deliberate treachery was probably planned by
Philip.
October 19, a large party made an attack on Hatfield, but was repulsed.
As the spring of 1676 advanced, a large body of Indians collected at
Peskeompskut for the purpose of catching a year’s stock of shad and
salmon. Parties from thence occasionally harassed the settlers below,
who knew that when the fishing season was over, the enemy would
constantly infest the valley, and watch every chance to kill the
unprotected. They therefore determined to take the initiative, and at
nightfall of May 18, a party of about a hundred and fifty men under
Captain William Turner made a night march, surprised the camp at
daylight the next morning and destroyed many of the enemy.
The homeward march was delayed so long that Indians from neighboring
camps began to appear. A released captive reported that Philip with a
thousand warriors was at hand, and as the enemy swarmed on rear and
flank, the retreat became almost a panic. The straggling and the wounded
were cut off. Captain Turner was shot while crossing Green River, about
a mile from the battle-field, and the party, under Captain Samuel
Holyoke, reached Hatfield with the loss of forty-two men.
The warring Indians never recovered from the blow at Peskeompskut.
Besides their slain, they lost their year’s stock of fish, and the
hundreds of acres of Indian corn they had planted with the assurance of
a permanent abode in that region. The broken, disheartened clans drifted
aimlessly eastward. They quarrelled among themselves. Philip, with a few
followers, skulked back to Pokanoket, where he fell, August 12, 1676.
The war ended soon after.
In the spring of 1677, some of the old settlers came back and planted
their deserted fields; preparations for building were well advanced by
some of the more venturesome, when, September 19, they were surprised by
Ashpelon with a party of Indians from Canada, and all were either killed
or captured.
In 1679 the General Court passed an act regulating the resettlement of
deserted towns, requiring the consent of certain authorities who should
prescribe
“In what form, way & manner, such townes shall be settled &
erected, wherein they are required to haue a principal respect to
neerness and conveniency of habitation for securitie against
enemyes & more comfort for Xtian comunion & enjoyment of God’s
worship & education of children in schools & civility.”
By virtue of this act a committee was appointed under whose direction a
resettlement of the town began in the spring of 1682. Induced by grants
of land, new settlers appeared, and the plantation progressed rapidly.
In 1686, sixty Proprietors are named. This year, young John Williams
appears on the scene as candidate for the ministry; and, September 21,
he received a “call.” He was married July 20, 1687, to Eunice, daughter
of Rev. Eleazer Mather, of Northampton. October 18, 1688, he was
ordained, and the First Church was organized.
The second meeting-house was built in 1684, the third in 1695, the
fourth, a very elaborate one, in 1729, the fifth, the present brick
structure, in 1824, and it is still occupied by the First Church. In all
these, save the last, the worshippers were “seated” by authority.
[Illustration: THIRD MEETING-HOUSE, 1695-1729.
(OLD INDIAN HOUSE ON THE RIGHT.)]
In 1688, on the news of the Revolution in England, the seizure of Andros
in Boston and the call for the election of representatives to organize a
new government for the Colony, the men of Deerfield acted promptly.
Lieutenant Thomas Wells, a commissioned officer under Andros, was
selected to represent the town, and the selectmen sent to Boston a
certificate to that effect. These men were fully aware that in the case
of a failure of the movement, the vindictive Andros would wreak his
vengeance upon all concerned. Shrewd men were at the fore, and Randolph
himself might search the town records in vain for any trace of these
proceedings or other treasonable action.
During King William’s War, the town was harassed by the enemy; drought
and insects ruined the crops, and a fatal distemper prevailed. There was
question of deserting the place, but bolder counsels controlled. Baron
Castine with an army from Canada attempted a surprise of the town,
September 15, 1694, but he was discovered just in time to close the
gates, and was driven back with small loss to the defenders. Another
army organized in Canada for the same purpose turned back on being
discovered by scouts. During this trial Deerfield suffered great losses,
but pluck carried her through.